Ontario group wants Conservative backing for farm income support

An Ontario farm group has asked the prime minister to back a provincial farm program that Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and organizations on the Prairies oppose.

Grain Farmers of Ontario — which represents 28,000 corn, soybean and wheat growers — wants Stephen Harper to agree to fund the federal share of the Ontario Risk Management Program (RMP) and a comparable plan in Quebec, said chairman Don Kenny in a letter.

The Liberals and NDP have said they would fund the program. While the Conservatives won most rural Ontario seats in the 2008 election, they face stiff contests in many of them from the Liberals and NDP. The Ontario Risk Management Program issue is a hot button item among farm voters.

Kenny says the Risk Management Program program would support 50,000 farm families across the province.

“Farmers across our province have united under a common request being made to all candidates,” he says in the letter. “Farmers across our province agree — a fully funded Risk Management Program is vital for market stability, competitiveness and innovation in the agricultural sector.”

The program is designed as a partnership between farmers, who would voluntarily pay 30 per cent of the cost of the program with governments sharing the remaining 70 per cent, split between the feds and the province.

Ontario is willing to pay its share, but the federal Conservatives have balked at the deal because it isn’t supported by the commodity groups on the Prairies or Grain Farmers of Canada. Ritz says because the program is based on market prices, it could be subject to countervail.

Kenny says the Risk Management Program “is an insurance-based program that will stabilize the market volatility faced by Ontario’s grain farmers as a result of grain and input prices set by world markets and often influenced by factors out of our control.

“Our members understand the challenge your government faces when considering a region-specific program that has opposition from farm groups in other parts of the country,” Kenny continued.

Grain Farmers of Ontario hasn’t joined Grain Growers of Canada, in part, due to the dispute on Risk Management Program.

“It is our hope that a solution can be reached with a commitment from all sides to work together for a mutually beneficial solution,” Kenny said.

What Grain Farmers of Ontario wants is “a commitment from the Conservative government to meet with our organization to find new, innovative solutions to our funding needs that meet the objectives of both farmers and the government,” Kenny noted.